How to Promote Your Music with SoundCloud

Since CD Baby enables you to make all the music you distribute through us available on SoundCloud with the push of a button, I thought it’d be a good idea to list some of the ways you can use SoundCloud to promote and share your music across the web.

10 ways to promote your music with SoundCloud

1. Share your music publicly-

SoundCloud was designed to be the simplest way to store your tracks in one place and “push them out” to social networks, blogs, etc. You can easily share single tracks or “sets” (a playlist of songs that all appear in one waveform player) to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and more– or embed the SoundCloud player manually! Just click the “share” button on the player to get started sharing your music with the world.

When it comes to fan engagement, there are dozens of possibilities for sharing tracks and sets on SoundCloud: ask for feedback on alternate mixes, encourage your fans to create their own “perfect setlists,” post an untitled track and ask for fans to comment with their suggestions for the song name, etc.

2. Make it easy for bloggers to access your tunes-

SoundCloud makes it easier for you to do your own digital PR. Send your tracks to bloggers and journalists; you control whether they can download the tracks or simply stream them.

3. Share your works-in-progress privately-

Got some new material that you’d like to share with select fans? Are you collaborating with an artist across the country? The same private sharing feature that helps you manage your digital PR enables you to offer exclusive content and to solicit feedback from your producer, label, friends, or bandmates without having to “release” the tune to the world.

One of SoundCloud’s coolest features allows listeners to leave comments at specific points in the waveform. “Hey, I love this chorus!” “That guitar solo should be louder.” And so forth.

Be sure to check your comments, reply to your listeners, and leave comments on other bands’ songs as well!

6. Join “Groups”

There are all kinds of genre and location-based “groups” on SoundCloud. Pick out a few that you think your music would be right for, join ’em, and submit your tracks. It’s a great way to build a little online community that could lead to sales and gigs down the line.

7. Host a remix contest

Check out SoundCloud’s advice on hosting a remix competition. Then post all your song’s individual tracks and enlist your fans to make some killer remixes.

8. Follow, follow, follow

SoundCloud, in many ways, is a social community– consisting of content creators, listeners, critics, bookers, and more. You can be both a listener and creator. You don’t need to follow every person that follows you, but it’s wise to follow anyone who’s actively engaged with your music. After all, those are the people most likely to share your music with their own friends and followers.

SoundCloud allows you, via your track/set settings, to include links in the player that point people to where you’re selling your music on and offline. Be sure to send listeners to CD Baby so they can purchase your CDs, MP3s, and vinyl!

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How do you use SoundCloud? Has it been an effective promotional tool? Let us know in the comments section below.

This is interesting, but mp3 files are out-dated. When will CD Baby let us use FLAC or ALAC to distribute our music? Bandcamp and other sites already allow this and their fees are lower than those of CD Baby/SoundCloud.

Greg

I tried several times to upload to Soundcloud from CD baby but was forced to log in via Facebook. I already have a Soundcloud account but your login screen would not let me log into Soundcloud directly. So I kept trying to log in via FB only to have it go nowhere every time.

A-Lix.com

I’m grateful to the creators of Soundcloud to have created it. This article reminded me to use it more thought, thanks!

Hey Chris…a question. I just uploaded all my songs on CDBaby to SoundCloud and got this message in an email for each song uploaded:

——————

“Hi EdwardDeeMusic,

Our automatic content protection system has detected that your upload “All Alone with Me” may contain content that is copyrighted.
As a result, we have paused the upload of your audio for the time being.

If you are the original creator of the audio in all its parts, or have obtained all necessary licenses and permissions to upload and share this content, please contact us using the form below.

The SoundCloud team
————-
Not quite sure why this is happening. I also take advantage of synch licensing through CDBaby. Is that why I’m getting this message? Do I need to fill out this form for every song I want to upload to Soundcloud? I figure other CDBaby artists might be running into this as well. Got advice? Thx.

Hey E, I'm pretty sure this is easily resolvable. It's a result of SoundCloud having a linkup with one of our digital partners (I think MediaNet?– but don't quote me) that has your music in their system. Send an email to copyright@soundcloud.com and explain the situation. They can "whitelist" your tracks.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to do. Are you trying to import a song to SoundCloud? You can definitely do that from your computer. If you're having difficulty, contact SoundCloud's customer service and they can help you upload.

Yes, they do have many similar features. However, the big thing with SoundCloud is that their player enables commenting on the wave form itself, so it's an excellent solution for long-distance musical collaboration, as well as getting your fans' input on particular tunes.

caleb

I have soundcloud on my Mac, but there seems to be no option to drag&drop a song into a playlist, nor import, nor any form of adding mp3 files to Sound Cloud from my computer. Any advice?

Shantell

Hi Chris- I’m wondering what soundcloud does that Reverb Nation doesn’t. It sounds like they have pretty similar features to me.
Thanks!

yea you want to use cloudkillers for sure. it's the best site by far for soundcloud promotion because most of the other sites just spam your page with fake bot plays while CK is real person to person plays/comments and it's free.
how can you beat that lol

It is hard for artist to promote their music in the internet, since 'everyone' wants to be a singer or producer. Harlem Shake success inspired us to promote music by YouTube, the key component is.. Virality. Check: http://instaviewsquick.blogspot.com

Check out Con-Crete Souljaz on soundcloud a rap group from Florida all feedback is welcome!

Mr Indie

Please feel free to check out my music Alpha Wave Movement. Ambient/space music contemplative slow evolving textural electronica. https://soundcloud.com/betawave31
I also compose ambient/dub as Within Reason. There are samples on Sound Cloud for each project. Enjoy.

I paid for a pro account & I have been getting great results just following other people who like similar music but Sound Cloud warned me & flagged my account. I really feel betrayed by Sound Cloud & feel it is just another Corporate think tank using us all & changing the rules as they go. Just another MySpace if you ask me.

Yo guys, don’t take this post as something I want to give as spam, just take a moment to read this.
I’m a advanced DJ in all kinds of music, and it would be great if you could follow me on soundcloud!
Worth a look, I promise..

it basically guarantees that people will comment back on your songs if you comment on theirs versus doing it on SC and having only 1 out of 10 show you any love back. This way you get real people hearing your music.

Sorry but this whole website is totally confusing, I can read what Sound/cloud does, but nothing on how to sign up for it, to get my music onto it. And I don’t think everyone who connects to this site, knows what DIY means. Lot of confusion here.

Personally, I’ve had some issues with sound cloud. One of the issues was with the private playlist option. I created a private song list and gave the URL out to certain parties .. then for some unknown reason, after I tried to add another song to it … my private playlist would not play properly. I never could get any tech help from Soundcloud on the issue. The other issue was spammers contacting me through their messaging feature. (Mostly come on’s from women in other countries asking me to contact them – Yikes!!!!) Then I got the SoundCloud app, and for some reason it will not link to my personal music account… It only seems to recognize me as a listener…not as an artist. So I’m over it. I just stopped using sound cloud altogether.